A Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on Ballet: Set the Stage with Letraset

Spoiler alert: this post is not about an obscure form of biblioclasty–or something even more unimaginable.

Cotsen has its fair share of picture book introductions to the ballet, many of them in the Diana R. Tillson collection. Of course there’s a copy of Noel Streatfeild’s The First Book of the Ballet (1956), complete with an inspirational story about a young girl who wants to be a ballerina, a glossary of steps, history of the ballet, and plot synopses of famous ballets (Streatfeild was also the author of  the beloved 1936 Ballet Shoes).

page 29 and 87, Cotsen 85248

Pages 29 and 87, (Cotsen 85248). The image on the right reproduces notations for a ballet choreographed by George Balanchine. The First Book of the Ballet. New York: F. Watts, c1953.

For a quirkier approach by a certifiable balletomane, there’s Edward Gorey’s The Lavender Leotard: or Going a Lot to the New York City Ballet (1973).    The page on the right includes a self-portrait of the author-illustrator in raccoon coat and tennis shoes.   It was impossible to miss him on the nights he came to City Ballet.

Front board and page [1], Cotsen 152312

Front board and page [1], The Lavender Leotard. New York: Gotham Book Mart, 1973 (Cotsen 152312)

For those who prefer to see supple animals instead of trained classical dancers demonstrate an arabesque, entrechat or a pas de deux,  there’s always author-illustrator Janis Mitchell’s The Hamster Ballet Company (1986) or Donald Elliott’s Frogs and Ballet (1979) illustrated by Clinton Arrowood.

Page [4] and [12], Cotsen 86267

Pages [4] and [12], The Hamster Ballet Company. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986 (Cotsen 86267)

frogs21and29

Pages 21 and 29, Frogs and the Ballet. Ipswich, Mass.: Gambit, 1979 (Cotsen 85247)

Then there is Dennis Knight’s Ballet, Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book number 5. It may be the only introduction to the ballet in the collection that is also an activity book.  It comes with two leaves of “rub down instant pictures,” or forty-six Letraset transfers.  For those of you with enquiring minds hungry for more information about this form of image-transfer technology, check out the webpage for SPLAT, the Society for the Preservation of Letraset Action Transfers.

In the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book on the ballet, the sheets of Letraset transfers are divided into five sections, A-E, and each has been designed to complete a particular illustration in the text.  B and D require about as much skill as filling in an outline drawing in a coloring book,  while A, C, and E ask rather more of the reader. Each set of  figures has to be arranged on the set of the correct ballet without any synopsis or photographs of an actual production to help visualize the scene.  Perhaps this exercise was intended to engage young artists, who might yearn to design costumes or sets, rather than young dancers.

Luckily, Cotsen has two editions of Instant Picture Book number 5 and the 7th impression has all the transfers untouched on the inserted plates.

letraset

Unused plates of Letraset transfers, Ballet. London: Patterson Blick, c1968 (Cotsen 87411)

The illustrated directions for transferring the figures are printed on the rear wrapper.  The earlier set of directions was illustrated with five pictures, but by the time the 7th impression was printed, the second and fourth illustrations were dropped and a cheery logo featuring a bee added in the upper left hand corner.   A second good reason for keeping both copies in the collection!

backwrapper

Rear wrapper with fully illustrated instructions for transferring the designs. Ballet. [Beckenham, Kent, England: Patterson Blick, c1968] (Cotsen 16093)

Rear wrapper, Cotsen 16093 c.2

Rear wrapper of the 7th impression with abbreviated instructions and logo, (Cotsen 87411)

Whoever filled in the scenes from the featured ballets in Cotsen’s “used” copy of Instant Picture Book Number 5 seems to have known something about classical dance.  Notice the simpering White Cat (sans Puss in Boots) has been placed near the wings in the background of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.  It could be the finale, where all the characters return for one last turn on the stage.

Page 8, Cotsen 16093

Page 10, (Cotsen 16093)

In the scene from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, the reclining figure of Albrecht has been rotated so that he is balancing en pointe.  Maybe it was an honest mistake, but I’m not so sure.  It does make the romantic hero look a bit like Gene Kelly executing a jazzy move, so maybe it was done on purpose to juice things up.

Page 8, Cotsen 16093

Page 8, (Cotsen 16093)

And for the third ballet?  I was expecting Stravinsky’s Petroushka. Instead it is Arthur Bliss’s Checkmate (1937), which was choreographed by Ninon de Valois, founder of the Birmingham and Royal Ballet, a work now considered a cornerstone of the modern British ballet repertory.

The ballet’s premise is that chess pieces come to life and act out human emotions (chiefly lust and blood lust) on stage.  Whoever completed the scene arranged the figures so that one of the Red Knights is poised to stab a black pawn, while the Black Knight menaces his twin. The Black Queen, the femme fatale of the piece, looms ominously in the rear.

Page 13, Cotsen 16093

Page 13, (Cotsen 16093)

I wonder if Checkmate was chosen at the suggestion of  the publication’s technical advisor, the great English danseur noble Michael Somes, who created the role of the Black Knight in the original production.

Michael Somes

Publicity shot of the great British dancer, Michael Somes, the technical advisor for Instant Picture Book number 5.

Who transferred all the Letraset figures in Cotsen 16093?  An older child studying ballet or an adult who was familiar with the repertory?  Whoever it was, he or she seems to have taken the task fairly seriously, whether or not the scenes were composed from memories of choreography from actual productions.  It’s evidence of a different kind of engagement with the book…

checkmate 1

Olivia Bell as the Black Queen in the Australian Ballet’s production of Checkmate.

 

 

Marks in Books 12: Mrs. Sherwood Corrects Proofs of “The Oddingley Murder”

oddingley murder

Over her long career, Mary Martha Sherwood typically wrote for four or five hours each day.  Although she is best known for two novels for children–The History of Little Henry and His Bearer (1814) and The History of the Fairchild Family (1818)–she also produced penny pamphlets, adaptations of eighteenth-century children’s classics like Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, and textbooks for use in the school she and her husband ran after their return from India in 1818.  Even with the income from the school, the Sherwood family was strapped for cash, so she turned out around a hundred tracts over the next twelve years to make extra money.

sherwood front

Frontispiece, Mrs. Sherwood and Her Books for Children, M. Nancy Cutt (London, Oxford University Press, 1974) (Cotsen PR5449.S4 Z63)

The Cotsen Children’s Library has a fascinating manuscript from this period of her life: the annotated proofs for a tract about a notorious murder that had taken place in the tiny village of Oddingley, Worcestershire on Midsummer’s Day 1806 that went unsolved until 1830.

fullpage

The Oddingley Murders. London: Houlston and Son, 1830. (Cotsen 40111)

The lurid story was a quintessential English crime set in a beautiful, remote village seething with class resentment.  The cast of characters included a grasping vicar, a shady man of all work, some disgruntled farmers, and the dapper old soldier who was the local magistrate.  Add two brutal killings and a shallow grave in a ramshackle barn and voila, a perfect candidate for Masterpiece Mystery…

When the murdered murderer’s body was finally found, Mrs. Sherwood, a Worcestershire native herself, picked up her pen to write about this real-life crime.  The why is more complicated than it might first appear.  To a devout Evangelical Christian like Sherwood, the way the perpetrators of the crime was discovered after twenty-four years fulfilled Isaiah XXIX.15: “ Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, “Who seeth us?  Who knoweth us?”

A personal connection to the sordid affair may also explain her eagerness to drive home the lesson that “No man can conceal what Providence willeth to bring to the light.”  Her brother John Marten Butt was drawn into the case as Oddingley’s pastor: he was the successor of the murdered clergyman George Parker.   During his tenure in Oddingley, Butt came to realize that his parishioners had known all along the identity of the perpetrators and felt no remorse at their never having been brought to justice.  The villagers’ attitudes so profoundly disturbed Butt that he eventually left his living for another.

Mrs. Sherwood must have written the text almost immediately after the January trial.  On February 18, 1830, her publisher, Edward Houlston, mailed the proof of the tract now in the Cotsen collection to her in Worcester from Wellington, Salop (Shropshire), about forty five miles away.

Google Maps. (2015).

Google Maps. (2015).

To save time and money on postage, he wrote her a letter, asking how many copies she wanted and if he might enclose copies in her parcel for delivery to the Worcester booksellers.  In the closing, he asked if she could write six more tracts for the new series at her earliest convenience, adding that two would suffice at present.

Houlsten's letter to Sherwood

Mr. Houlston’s letter to Mrs. Sherwood

After making changes on pages 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, and 18, Mrs. Sherwood wrote her reply to Houlston on the blank side of the sheet.

Page 6, with Mrs. Sherwood's corrections

Page 6, with Mrs. Sherwood’s corrections

Page 10 with Mrs. Sherwood's corrections

Page 10, with Mrs. Sherwood’s corrections

She said, “I had written a letter to you which I shall not send requesting you to be very quick in sending ‘The Oddingley Murder’ as people know I have written it and are enquiring for it.”  She directed him to send her four copies of the French-language translation of Little Henry and His Bearer, six of “The Mourning Queen,” a dozen “The Oddingley Murders,” and an unspecified number of a new tract for the booksellers.  She closed (a bit tartly) with “I will write some tracts when I can find time—but time is a very scarce commodity.”

On back of proof, Mrs. Sherwood's response to Mr. Houlston.

On back of proof, Mrs. Sherwood’s response to Mr. Houlston.

The sheet was folded up for a second time and mailed to Houlston on February the 20th.  Presumably it retraveled those forty-five miles to Wellington within twenty-four hours.  The speed of the British postal service during the nineteenth century is well known, but this corrected proof is testimony to its efficiency.  Of course, the service then was slow compared to what we have come to take for granted via the Internet, but this annotated proof is a vivid reminder that Mrs. Sherwood could never have written as much as she did without a superb communications infrastructure.

Mr. Houlton's address.

Mr. Houlston’s address.

And thanks to our paper conservator, Ted Stanley, for restoring the proof of this tract, which was found in rather parlous condition in the Wall of Books some months ago.